Arch Linux

mDuo13

Member

Registered: 2010-04-25

Posts: 93

Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

After a system upgrade somewhat recently, I found my graphics not working as well as usual.

For one thing, mplayer was suffering horrendous tearing under all rendering modes. Previously, I'd been able to get the gl renderer to work well with vsync so that it had almost no tearing issues. After the upgrade, neither that, nor xv, nor anything else seemed to be capable of rendering smoothly.

For another thing, I was seeing some glitches with the models of some units in Starcraft 2 under WINE. SCVs developed huge spiky poles coming out of their elbows, and Spine Crawler's poles reached up unto infinity while their beaks floated unattached nearby. I also had a noticeably reduced framerate (more than usual) during big battles in the game.

Downgrading from version 2.70.30-1 to 2.60.19.36 of the Nvidia driver (all 3 components) fixed the problems, so that's what I'm using now. I don't like the idea of being trapped on an older version of their driver while I wonder whether the new one fixes my issues or not, but I figured I'd at least post in case other people were experiencing the problems.

jelly

Administrator

From: /dev/null

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 714

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

On a side note:

1) This isn't nvidia's bug tracker
2) Because nvidia is closed source, we can't do nothing
3) report this at the nvidia forums / linux-bugs@nvidia.com.

BTW i have problems with 270.30 too, it get random screen flickering for 1 minute. I  reported it upstream but didn't get any reply of their devs

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fixu

Member

Registered: 2008-05-29

Posts: 27

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

me too, i also have some problems with the new nvidia driver. OpenGl does not work anymore and now I am using Xrender within KDE. Thats really weird and i dont want to downgrade.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

Try disabling composite.

techmagyor

Member

Registered: 2010-08-25

Posts: 31

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

consider also that the last testing driver, specificly 270.30 are beta driver (as showed on logo startup), maybe that's the real problem. As advice, nvidia open source driver nuvou are really that bad in compare of the official one? (yes i read the wiki, but would like to know a short advice from people that use it). Thanks in advance

sergi34

Member

Registered: 2010-01-20

Posts: 24

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

same problem for me. I can't even get on finishing loading my desktop

Disabling composite has done the trick, but I want the composite effects.

unfortunately I've already done a "pacman -Sc" and removed old nvidia packages.

Does anybody know how to get again 260.19.36 packages?

270 sucks!

thanks in advance

sergi34

Member

Registered: 2010-01-20

Posts: 24

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

Ok. It's solved.

I founded on the wiki how to revert packages and the ARM mirror with historical packages.

Reverted to driver 260, put composite again on xorg, reboot, and everything ok.

Finally put nvidia, nvidia-utils and lib32-nvidia-utils on IgnorePkg. I think I will be for a while without playing with nvidia driver again...

Korrode

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-11-02

Posts: 110

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

Why have beta nvidia drivers been added to the main repo anyway?

This is the opposite of what i've observed previously. Back when we went from Xorg 1.7 to 1.8 all nvidia users were screwed for a little while (and 173xx/96xx users for longer) because beta drivers didn't get added to the main repo... but I don't intend that as a complaint. I'm just pointing out that the main repo having the latest release driver has been stuck to stringently in the past, which I personally think is a good policy... why has that changed now?

I'd wager that most people feel "latest release version" is bleeding edge enough when it comes to the nvidia driver.

Last edited by Korrode (2011-04-08 20:32:16)

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Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

Why have beta nvidia drivers been added to the main repo anyway?

Because they're the only ones working with xorg-server-1.10. Though that doesn't explain why they're in [extra], I thought they're only in [testing].
All I can say is I don't have any problem with 270.30. My graphic card is old though, Geforce Go 6600.

techmagyor

Member

Registered: 2010-08-25

Posts: 31

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

Also i want to confifm what Gusar says. I have gnom3 from testing (obviously also xorg 1.10) and nvidia 270.30 for a nvidia 445m and no problems. No xorg.conf but in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Default nvidia Device"
        Driver "nvidia"
        Option "NoLogo" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "1"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP"
Option "TripleBuffer" "1"
Option "DamageEvents" "1"
# AC settings:
Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerLevelAC=0x2"
# Battery settings:
Option  "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerLevel=0x3"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "1"

EndSection

sergi34, could you explain better what you did? thanks in advance

jelly

Administrator

From: /dev/null

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 714

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

i have this issue with 270.30 http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthr … ost2416041

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sergi34

Member

Registered: 2010-01-20

Posts: 24

Re: Regressions in new Nvidia driver?

I just reverted to the previous nvidia driver 260.xx because with the new 270 in [extra] my desktop hanged just at loading time. It even cannot load the icons nor the task bar.

I'm not using gnome3, just gnome2 and xorg 1.9. I've never put the [testing] repository.

Sergi

To revert to 260.xx, I just followed this wiki entry:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Do … g_Packages

and everything is ok now.

thanks.

Also i want to confifm what Gusar says. I have gnom3 from testing (obviously also xorg 1.10) and nvidia 270.30 for a nvidia 445m and no problems. No xorg.conf but in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Default nvidia Device"
        Driver "nvidia"
        Option "NoLogo" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "1"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP"
Option "TripleBuffer" "1"
Option "DamageEvents" "1"
# AC settings:
Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerLevelAC=0x2"
# Battery settings:
Option  "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerLevel=0x3"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "1"

EndSection

sergi34, could you explain better what you did? thanks in advance